International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Research Applications and Utilization of Accelerators
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AP/IE-05
A New Positron Emission Particle Tracking Facility at iThemba LABS A. Buffler1, I. Govender1, T. Volkwyn1, and D. Parker2 1Department of Physics and Centre for Minerals Research, University of Cape Town, South Africa Corresponding Author: andy.buffler@uct.ac.za Positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) has become a powerful tool for in-situ characterisation of particulate flow within aggressive industrial environments, such as tumbling mills and powder mixers. PEPT is based on the tracking of a single tracer particle which has been labelled with a radionuclide that decays via β+ decay. The location of the particle is obtained by the triangulation of events associated with the detection of pairs of annihilation γ rays in a modified “positron camera”. One of the challenges facing PEPT is associated with labelling sub-millimetre sized particles which would allow studies in systems of finer particulate flow, such as flotation cells. The Positron Imaging Centre at the University of Birmingham is currently the only operational PEPT facility in the world. We are presently installing a PEPT laboratory at the iThemba LABS cyclotron facility in Cape Town. Details of this new facility will be presented, together with a flavour of recent PEPT data obtained in Birmingham, and results from our accelerator-based studies at iThemba LABS which are aimed at extending the state-of-the-art in the size and type of labelled tracer particles for PEPT work.
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